https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbE334xbHsU

(Also, note the irony of having the “LEGO In Real Life” title graphic as the only thing not made out of, er, LEGO in real life.)

I love how these rules are contradicted in the promotional image for this contest. (I guess the camera’s field of view did crop out the hand moving the robot, but still.)

It’s painfully obvious that Greenpeace are trying to appeal to people’s emotions by making an excessively maudlin, heavy-handed and extremely unsubtle propaganda film based off-of a recent cinematic success to get people to rally against the big nasty greedy corporations who are killing off the poor polar bears. “Shell is polluting are kids’ imagination”. Just… what? Is Shell brainwashing kids via LEGO now? Should I start wearing a tinfoil hat while brickfilming? Jokes aside, did they even WATCH The LEGO Movie? Clearly the irony of using TLM as a basis for their crusade is totally lost on them.

I’m actually confused what they’re even protesting about since their petition is so hilariously vague. How exactly is Shell “polluting imagination”, as they so histrionically put it? As far as I know, Shell sets have been mainly promotional polybag-type things, and there haven’t been any made for 15 years, as you pointed out. The Ferrari sets were also limited in number and had nothing directly to do with Shell anyway (did they make the sets because Ferrari is partnered with an oil/gas corporation which very few if any of their target demographic would be interested in? No, they made it because kids love racing cars.) This just begs the question of why they’re even picking on LEGO in the first place. And if they’re going to do it, why not provide some actual factual basis instead of blatantly trying to manipulate people’s emotions in such a half-baked and cringeworthy manner. The fact Greenpeace don’t even have an apparent clear goal or half-way solid argument to back up their demagogic statements kills off any credibility they have. Now all we need is a mob with torches and pitchforks besieging Billund (with the torches dipped in non-fossil fuel, naturally). And finally, what do they even hope to achieve with this campaign? Will Shell suddenly stop their allegedly unethical business practices because of this? I highly doubt it.

OK, I probably went off on a massive rant there, but I’m just getting sick and tired of constant fear-mongering with overly emotional messages that just turn me off. (I’m not even sure why I bothered with such a long post as Greenpeace are probably just trying to stir up controversy and grab attention with this campaign.) A logical argument backed up with solid facts and reputable research would be much more convincing, but apparently, despite all of humanity’s achievements we still have a limited capacity for rational thought…

The LEGO Movie cast a long shadow and definitely made the Simpsons episode look worse in comparison, both in terms of story, jokes and visual appeal (I was quite bothered that the digital LEGO was a pretty poor representation of the actual pieces).

I did like seeing the classic LEGO pirates. I wish The LEGO Movie had included more classic LEGO references beyond Benny and Classic Space.

I see where you’re coming from with your comment about the structure of my posts. I’m the kind of person who likes to read reviews of movies before I go and see them so that I can have a critical framework in place to dissect them as I watch, so I naturally write my articles that way. But I can see why other people wouldn’t enjoy that. I’ll keep your comment in mind as I write future articles.

I have suggestion on how you might word future “compare and contrast” opinion pieces I’ve seen from you recently. I enjoy these posts a lot, and I know it’s your own opinion that you are presenting, but I would suggest less leading language when introducing the films. I came to the same conclusion as you when I viewed both films, but I do feel like my opinion and experience was effected a bit when watching Addicted to You. I watched expecting to see the slow, sluggish animation, instead of observing it for myself. Simply putting both videos near the top of the post would solve this issue.

I’m not the biggest fan of “LEGO Black Ops”, but “Addicted to You” could definitely benefit from being about four minutes shorter. The most interesting thing that happens is that tracking shot of the characters holding hands.

As for “cartoony over emphasis”…

I wish them the best, but I will be genuinely surprised if they can pull this off.

(And technically, there is stop motion in the Rebrick contest entries featured in the film too.)

1. We’ve been doing almost constant research on this film
2. I’ve studied animation, LEGO, and stop-motion for 20+ years, and therefore know what stop-motion looks like when I see it
3. CG is not yet photoreal enough to pass as stop-motion
4. Anecdotes from the filmmakers are not evidence
5. All of the behind-the-scenes of The LEGO Movie released thus far feature exclusively CG animation craft and techniques
6. The folks who wrote the aforementioned articles about The LEGO Movie trailer did, in fact, jump the gun by calling the film stop-motion

 
I will concede that the snarky tone of this blog post is, in itself, not terribly productive. Now that a bunch of new behind-the-scenes videos have come out, I’ll write a more constructive follow-up.

If you’ve got other sources or things to contribute to the discussion (beyond just casting aspersions), we’d love to check them out.

I hope you realize how hypocritical this article is.

Can’t wait to own the DVD! (like you).

As a father… I got the point of the movie. I’m always keeping my kids away from my studio so they don’t destroy my setup, but thankfully, I’m not Lord Business. They have plenty of LEGO (well, Hero Factory and Duplo) and we play together a lot. Never the less, that part was a message to me (to be careful about how I deal with LEGO and my kids).

And… as a father again… I really know what “We are from planet Duplo and we came to destroy you” means. 😀

I would argue that LEGO Universe wins at un-synergy. While there were those two tiny tie-in sets, the vast majority of the stuff on screen was not buyable or even buildable (the minifig accessories were especially egregious). At least with Clutch Powers they were showing sets that existed.

“Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

The dot did not change into a butterflie, but maybe it’s because the man only saw something wrong about it instead of seeing it for what it is: a simple spot.

We all have imperfections we wish we could wash away. Even if no one else can see them, they can still bother us our entire lives.

http://www.youtube.com/user/FlyingMinifig

http://www.youtube.com/jonndthunder

Thanks, and this project is awesome!

http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/bricktastic/good-company.html

Then there was a pretty scary version of The Thing, filmed with the Lego Studios camera.

And here’s my channel just in case. http://www.youtube.com/user/TOILikePieStudios

And me on youtube http://www.youtube.com/user/osomstudios/videos

Osomstudios

And my FB account is:
https://www.facebook.com/GashDusenStudios

http://aiwha-brickfilms.com/list.html

I hope this is useful.

1:10, hammer as razor. Love it.

Reference: http://collider.com/comic-con-the-lego-movie-panel-recap/

Retrofuturism
Animation Frontiersmen
Paying Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

Cable28’s Iron Man 3 Trailer #1: IN LEGO has over a million views on YouTube and is definitely worth viewing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJhL0Ihw_UM

And how could I not include Keshen8’s Ninja Assassin Trailer that has over 1.6 million views. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycAY7vVpzNc

@(^_^)@

If you wouldn’t mind checking out my animation, I’d love to hear what you think about it! It’s called “Breaking the Fourth Wall”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w0R2QyffTI

It’s my first real animation I’ve ever done 🙂 I’m not too proud of the sound design but I really don’t know much about that stuff.. But I’d love to here what you think!

Does anyone happen to have a must-see list of Lego animations? The only ones I’ve seen that I would consider legitimate short-films are Lindsay Flea’s “The Magic Portal” and Maxime Marion’s “Droits d’auteur”. As much as I enjoy watching little lego comedy sketches by people like Keshen8 and SpastikChuwawa, sometimes I want a little bit more substance 😛

Merci beaucoup!

The bottom line, though, is that more people than ever are trying their hand at LEGO animation. As far as I’m concerned, this can only be a good thing.

They really need a bit of fact checking with some of these rules.

Contrast this with the LEGO Nicktoons contest from 2008 (which David and I tied for second place in). The parameters were much more open ended (basically just a 2 minute time limit), we all kept the rights to our films, our films got distributed on a major outlet (Comcast OnDemand) and the Grand Prize winner was then commissioned to make an animation for LEGO and Nickelodeon (Spongebob’s “Don’t be a jerk, it’s Christmas”).

Really great diverse films came out of the Nicktoons contest, if it had been a Tongal contest for Spongebob, we would have gotten a bunch of Spongebob animations, which is less exciting. Both Garret Barati and David Pagano got noticed by LEGO through contests and then were given opportunities for actual paid work. This doesn’t seem to be what the Tongal contests will lead to.

IMO it is very poor form by TLG, which is a billion $ company, to use services like this to get very high quality results for next to nothing. There is so many restrictions on the entries now that the mold is set for what they want. If they know what they want they should support the industry and pay for it.

Not well played LEGO.

I feel very lucky to have been born when I did. I was lucky that my family had a camcorder when I was a kid, which is what I used to make my first LEGO videos. They were just really starting to drop in price and become widely available around then.

YouTube also launched right when I was in college so I was able to start building an audience then. Thinking about YouTube distribution really affected how I wrote and filmed The Nightly News at Nine.

Yay for the modern era!

If anything, this is good news, as Brickfilming is now becoming more popular and recognised as a hobby. Hopefully new animators will in time become better and release longer, higher quality films. I myself have only just begun and still have much to learn.

One issue I think, though, is creativity. The brickfilms that become the most popular are invariably based on licensed themes (Star Wars, Batman, etc.) or existing material (such Insomniac’s music videos). The bulk of the work produced by the most famous/popular brickfilmers (ForrestFire, Keshen, Brotherhood Workshop) especially follows this trend. Fancypants’ most popular video is a lightsaber duel. Even Michael Hickox tends to tap into the average person’s perception of LEGO–as a children’s toy, telling stories in a simple, almost nostalgic way. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this (Insomniac’s music videos are incredible, The Force Unleashed is rightly a textbook case on how to film a fight scene, Brotherhood’s films are hilarious and well executed, and your own “Don’t Blink” film was very nicely done) but it does point to a tendency to rely on other people’s creativity to get popular. It’s to a certain extent understandable–using something popular and recognizable (like Batman) will reach a much larger audience (I suspect this is why Superman and Batman are going to be in The LEGO Movie…), but it makes original, stand-alone stories told using LEGO as the medium much more difficult to bring to a larger audience. I doubt many outside of the brickfilming community are familiar with, say, “The Citizen of the Year”, “The Call of Farqunglu”, “Zombie: Genesis”, “Unrenewable”, “Copyright”, or “Pirates Rule!”; which is a shame, as these sort of films are by far more interesting than a short clip of Batman fighting Stormtroopers. Sadly, all this will most likely encourage most brickfilmers to make clips about licensed characters, instead of creating their own unique stories.

Well, I went a bit off-topic there, sorry for the overlong post. I enjoyed this article; it’s nice to see a different writer on The Set Bump! (Not that I have anything against Pickett and Pagano, of course!)

Also, great point about the LEGO Movie! It’ll be exciting to see what happens.

Those kids publish every 2 sec of animation they do and they are so proud of it. That’s the way people learns: by trying. So, I wouldn’t say their is a bunch of bad brickfilms on internet, I prefer to say that their a lot of people out there trying and learning, becoming better movies after movies. That’s how I started and I can tell you that’s how every great film maker started.

Jackson, this blog post is awesome and I agree with you. 🙂

-Sir Glub-

BrickFlix does indeed accept submissions from anyone. For instance, I’ve never attended, but my videos have played there every year.

Anyway, I noticed that the playlist had some films on it made by people who didn’t attend (or weren’t on the Q&A panel)–does this mean you can submit your films even if you don’t attend in person?

The prominence of the licensed characters gives me pause. But given the failure of LEGO Universe, I guess we can’t blame them for eschewing a LEGO-specific mythos…

I am happy to see a black minifig co-existing with yellow minifigs for the first time since Cloud City. If I can’t buy that Morgan Freeman minifig, I will be very disappointed.

Sometime, when I “bump” my set/camera/everything, I don’t see it right away or I decide to continue with the shot (for whatever reasons). We should do a mashup of every sequence, published of not, that have a bump in it. Could be fun to… cry about all those accident”

Long live The Set Bump!

The shaky-cam gets a bit distracting at times, but there’s some neat stuff going on this video, especially set-wise. I just wish we could see it in full-screen and not as a side-by-side composite deal.

And the sets are great! I love the future scene (obviously).

Personally, I’d rather have a film keep my attention at less than 100% animation quality than see a super-slick movie with a lame, boring story — and the former is what we’ve got here. Well done.

I had seen both “The Magic Portal” and “GO MINIMAN GO” prior to making this, and the latter, in particular, did probably serve as a big inspiration though I tried to give my film a different focus. I made this for a contest, the theme of which was “Back to the Future”, which is why I chose this idea.

Looking over it now, I see several areas for improvement, but given the time span (I had just over a month to make this) and my general inexperience with stop-motion I’m quite pleased with how it turned out. I did end up re-shooting the Egypt scene as it was extremely flickery, but I’m not sure why it ended up still having loads of flicker despite my best efforts.

Incidentally, I had originally considered using different snippets of music for different scenes (for example, the Egypt scene was supposed to have the Slavonic March, and the pirate/explorer scene the Ride of the Valkyries), and Also Sprach Zarathustra was supposed to be used for the climax, but unfortunately I ran out of time and had to go with a single piece of music.

I certainly intend to continue brickfilming, though at this moment I’m extremely busy. Still, I’ve got several story ideas and am working on scripting, and I hope to work on some projects over the summer!

People spend so much time on their brickfilm, it’s sad when it come out with lightflicker or shaky cam when it’s an easy thing to fix… if you know about it. I’m working on a BrickFilm Workshop, but it will be in French (as it is not easy for me to write in English). BrickSet had put a lots of reviews about LEGO sets together, maybe the new BrickAnimator can pull together all the ressources about brickfilm in one place? 🙂

The time machine commands a lot of respect and I wish they continue brickfilming, they can only improve with time, experiences and… some advice 🙂

It really is amazing that they can turn out so many stop-motion videos so quickly and have a generally high quality to them.

Thanks, David.

1) You and your family might want to think about just attending Brickworld Chicago as public attendees on either Saturday or Sunday. You won’t be able to enter the contest, but you will be able to meet David and I (and other animators present) and watch the animations (we’ll have them playing on a loop during the public hours, in addition to showing them on Saturday evening for the festival screening). You’ll also be able to see all the cool LEGO exhibits.

2) All Access Registrants can attend the film festival screening on Saturday night.

But yeah, most people aren’t going to have any clue who made it.

Spoiler………no brickfilmers won. It was an honor just to get accepted into the festival.

And say, that car parking trick looks familiar… 🙂

Of course, from a consumer perspective it does indeed take away some of the magic, but then again, you don’t have to watch it if that bothers you, right?

without this great blog I would not have found it

Huzzah! That’s one of the reasons we started this blog. Thanks for the feedback!

(Note: Sorry for all the mistake, English is my second language. Thanks)

I’ve show all top 5 finalists to my student for Halloween. I could see in their face what they liked the best in every video. They told me they liked my movie, but “Monster in the closet” make them laugh and smile much more. This movie deserved to win more than mines.

I had two movie in the top 5 into the ReBrick contest, not because my movies were the best, but because I’ve ask all my friends to vote for me. “The Zombies” was online at the very beginning of the contest because I wanted to have more time to get votes (like you pointed out). My other movie, “Monster SWAT”, was finished and online juste a few days before the deadline… but I’ve spend all the week-end asking my friends, one by one, to go vote for it. I must say I was feeling bad for others movie I was kicking out of the Top 5. Sadly, the rules didn’t call for the best movie, but the most “voted for”.

I’m looking forward to participate to others contests, but if I ever win something, I want to win because I’ve made a good movie, not because I had more friends willing to vote for me. Contest are great way to work on my animation skills and storytelling. I’m happy that “Monster in the closet” won, because even my students like it better. Maybe we should ask them to be the jury on a contest? 🙂

Happy brickfilming!
MonsieurCaron

That’s a really interesting point about which ones were uploaded to the YouTube channel. It definitely implies that someone at LEGO took the time to watch the videos and pick the best ones. It’s a shame they didn’t do that for the contest…

I also found it interesting how my video was one of 5 uploaded on the LEGO channel, yet I was not one of the 5 finalists in the actual competition.

“Animaniacs”, being the name of a popular television program, has been a registered trademark of Warner Bros. for about 20 years. Hence, it will not be the name of our blog.

Blockmotion Workshop
Brickmotion Workshop
BricksAlive Studios
BricksAlive Workshop
Bricksalive Animations
AFOL Animations
RightBrick Animations
RightBrick Studios
D&D Brick Productions

And my last and final (and kinda pointless) one….

Two Guys in an Attic Brick Productions
(even though i’m sure that Mr. Pagano and Mr. Pickett don’t work in a closet….it also seems like i heard somthing about an apartment or somthing…oh well, I thought it was funny :P)

or

“BrickFlix” (like Netflix)

or

“The Plastic Fantastic”

Funny thing is, I’ve ask ReBrick if I can participate (having my movie as an example) and they said Yes as long as I submit a new movie! So I did with “The Zombies”.

Funny thing n. 2: They will choose a winner from the top 5… and for now we are only 4 participants. So, come on everybody, submit your movies!

🙂

hope you lilke
good luck

Film Bricker
Block Studer
Frame By Bricks
Stud Frame
Movie Snot
7th Block Art
7th Art’s brick
Film Bricks
Movie Bricks
Film Stud
Snot Film
Tubular Bricks
Techni Blocker

I am French, I hope that there is no unpleasant double meaning in English !

Stop Motion Studs

Bricks that Walk

Bricks, Camera, Action

Studs in Motion

My point in singling out these animations was precisely to draw attention to the way that pursuing “realism” with a higher FPS can lead to sacrifices in animation quality. There are some high-FPS brick animations that do it well. “The Magic Portal” immediately springs to mind.

The question people should be asking is, “what frame rate should I use on this particular film?”, and I think the answer there is closely tied to another question: “why am I making animated films?” If your films are an outlet for you to experiment with super-slick graphics, then animating at 25+ fps might make sense. It’s another way for you to attempt to improve the visual aspect of your craft.

However, I think most successful filmmakers and animators make films because they want to tell memorable, compelling stories. In that sense, visuals are only one part of the language of cinema, and making sure all aspects of your film are on the same level as the picture is a balancing act in itself.

“The Machine” has sharp visuals, but is not terribly noteworthy or memorable otherwise. Does the fact that the main character has an animated face make it easier to tell what he’s thinking or doing? In this case, not really. His physical motion is smooth, but his movements are robotic; he walks in a straight line, turns, and then walks in a straight line again. Does that make his walk animation better or “more realistic” than a 12 fps walk cycle that bends and flows with human feeling? I would say no.

Honestly, the thing I found most impressive about “The Machine” was the animation of the alarm clock being shut off; the offset plate that is hit and becomes a tile for a frame or two was a brilliant little touch. That alone was more interesting to me than coffee that looked like real fluid… which the guy then drank with stiff movements that didn’t look anything like a living character drinking something.

“Good” vs. “realistic” in the world of animation is a whole other conversation — perhaps one that warrants its own post. 🙂

It’s like how a lot of major modern stop-motion features are about spooky/creepy/dead characters — using the built-in, off-putting jerkiness of stop-motion to their advantage.

Good review.

Brick Take One

Bricks, Flicks and Motion Pics.

Brick Production

That’s all I could think of…

It’s simple, short, and easy to remember, and evokes the spirit of animation. After all half the reason most people animate this medium is to bring them to life.

StudMotion

BlockTheater/BrickTheater/StudTheater

BrickVid

I also have a question, when will the winners of this contest be announced?

-Hidden

Animators Club

Brick Bringers

Connecting the Bricks

New Block City

Blockington Post

Brick Club

Clubrick

Thank you…… 🙂

I wanted to see more acting from the band members; the pianist/lead singer has some nice moments, but overall I didn’t feel like the animation had too much variety. It felt almost more like motion graphics than character animation.

The trumpet players disappearing back into their instruments was pretty cool, though. 🙂

…or some variation on the theme. I liked your Blocks Office idea as well. 😀

One thing to keep in mind is that the ideal name should evoke equal parts “LEGO” and “film/animation” — not one or the other — which I know makes things a little trickier.

Keep the ideas coming!

legopedia : )

brickinator
animatebrick
bricommanders
bricklanders
dblogs
lifeofbricks
bicksinmotions
animatorsofthebrick
blokbyblok
thedavidbrothers
studmotion
epicbrickblog

Brickelganer
Brickblog
the David’s in motion
Blokblog
the Commander’s of blokammander
and Lastly, the Double Brickmators

Davidmation or Davidsmation
EPIC- Every Picture Is Critical
the BrickBlog
the BlocktyBlog or the BlockBlog
Davidbricks

And I know its not part of the contest but I also have a slogan idea: 2 Davids, 1 Dream…

Hope My Comment is Helpful!

Ogelmation
BrickbyBrick
Life Through Bricks

still tinking…

As in a reel for a film.

Stud Animation
Stud-Stopmotion
Moving Blocks
Flicks of Bricks

1) BrickAnimation ((hehe sorry, but we really do like the name) 😀

2) Blog-a-Brick

3) Brickablog (like brickabrack but brickablog)

Time for some bananas now. @(^_^)@

But… It there is a contest, I will try to help 🙂

So, first idea: MeliesBricks
George Méliès being the father of special effect. 🙂

Even the 4 episode order has a super tough deadline, with around one month per 2-minute episode. All I can say is, good luck to whomever ends up winning this contest!

Thanks for posting it!

These fan playlists are cool, though it’s odd further still that they make no reference to Tongal.com or the stop-motion contests there.

Oh, and if you excuse the shameless self-promotion, I used it as a stylistic element on a part of a short animation as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXqDmGorNLY
😉

Keep those reviews coming, very good reads so far!